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Valerie Gillies

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Valerie Gillies

  • Welcome
  • About
  • Biography
  • Photos & Videos
  • News & Updates
  • Publications
  • Poetry in Public
  • Springteller
  • Edinburgh Makar
    •  

      Valerie Gillies

      "Valerie Gillies writes like the wind and jinks like a hare in the fields of language"

      Get in touch
    • Valerie Gillies creates a poetry that lives up to Scotland’s resurgent powers.

      Her language is musical, her themes elemental. Mapping the country as she finds it today, she is alive to immediate experience.

    • Biography

      "Born in Canada, brought up in Lanarkshire, and educated in Edinburgh and India...

      Gillies writes a richly varied poetry which celebrates life."

      Douglas Gifford, Scottish Literature

      Valerie Gillies is an internationally known and highly regarded poet. She was the Edinburgh Maker, poet laureate to the city, 2005 - 2008.

      Her poetry collections include Tweed Journey (1989) which has been described as ‘a key text in contemporary writing’ (SB Kelly). Other award-winning volumes include Each Bright Eye (1977), The Ringing Rock (1995) and The Lightning Tree (2002). She is a regular contributor to major anthologies.

       

      Valerie writes in regions from the Borders to the Highlands, from the Inner Hebrides to the Angus glens, from Orkney to Galloway.

      She often works collaboratively with visual artists, notably in a series of poem-inscriptions with different sculptors at sites in southern Scotland. The book Men and Beasts: Wild Men and Tame Animals of Scotland (2000), together with the touring exhibition of the same name, was the result of a year-long collaboration with the photographer Rebecca Marr.

       

      She received a Creative Scotland Award in 2005 to write The Spring Teller, a book of landmark poems inspired by Scotland’s wells and springs (Luath, 2008).

       

      Valerie is an inspirational teacher of creative writing in schools, colleges, and universities, and she has held several writing fellowships across the country. She is a literary arts practitioner in psychiatric and general hospitals with Artlink. She has edited the Scottish Poetry Library’s first-ever Poetry Map of Scotland, which maps locations and living poets on their interactive website.

      Valerie lives in Edinburgh with her husband, the Celtic scholar Professor William Gillies. They have a son and two daughters.

      'Best Loved Poems'

       

      A few poems to sample:

      'The Wedding Reel'

      'Maeve in Manhattan' (Audio from The Jewel Box CD)

      'Surf-Speak'

    • News & Updates

      ‘The Harp to Aeolus’
      Poem-inscription for the Wind-Harp made from the wood of the wych-elm tree by Mark Norris, harp-maker, for the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh.
      See Valerie recite online in the film of The Wych Elm Project

       

      Summer Exhibition 2016
      Work in progress with Anna S King, fibre artist, for Dawyck Botanic Garden. Scottish Borders.

       

      CRITICAL ACCLAIM
      To read about Valerie’s poetry, see
      Hunter, Fraser, and Keppie, Lawrence, A Roman Frontier Post and its People: Newstead 1911 – 2011, National Museums Scotland, 2012. www.nms.ac.uk/books


      Northwords Now, Issue 23, Spring 2013, pp.20-21. The Spring Teller by Valerie Gillies: Review by Ted Bowman. www.northwordsnow.co.uk

    • Publications

      "all the time I was there I was walking in your poem"

      Anne Matheson, Biggar Public Art

      "Gillies' poetry shows a masterly fluency with form kept taut by its over-riding themes... this is polyglot poetry, yet it has a remarkably unbookish and outdoors feel."

      S B Kelly, Scotland on Sunday

       

      Valerie Gillies' poetry collections include The Ringing Rock (1995) and The Lightning Tree (2002). She is a regular contributor to major anthologies such as The Faber Book of Scottish Poetry. Valerie has won the Eric Gregory Award for Poetry and three Scottish Arts Council book Awards.

       

      Her work includes many collaborative projects with visual artists and musicians, notably in a series of poem-inscriptions with different sculptors at sites in Southern Scotland. The book Men and Beasts: wild men and tame animals of Scotland (2000), together with the touring exhibition of the same name, was the result of a collaboration with the photographer Rebecca Marr.

       

      "A poet of unusual technical ability"

      Shirley Toulson, British Book News

       

      "I like the way in which these poems are rooted in the elemental world... the craft and truth are one."

      Robert Nye, The Times

       

      "Gillies writes of place, history, landscape, myth and legend. The Lightning Tree will enhance her reputation... Its language is musical, energetic, approachable; its subject-matter, life enhancing and invigorating; its themes fundamental and provocative."

      Douglas Lipton, Northwords

       

      Where to Buy

      Copies of Valerie's books are available to buy from:

      The Scottish Poetry Library Bookshop

      Luath Press Bookshop

      Amazon The Book Depository

       

      Collections of Poetry

      2009 The Spring Teller, Luath 

      2002
       
      The Lightning Tree, Polygon available from Scottish Poetry Library

      2000
       
      Men and Beasts, with photographer Rebecca Marr, Luath Press (non-fiction and poetry)
       

      1998
       
      St Kilda Waulking Song, artist's book with Will Maclean, Morning Star

      1995
       
      The Ringing Rock, Scottish Cultural Press available from Scottish Poetry Library

      1992
       
      Poeti della Scozia Contemporanea, Supernova, Venezia [translation]

      1990 
       
      The Jordanstone Folio, with 12 artists, Tay press

      1990
       
      The Chanter's Tune, Canongate available from Scottish Poetry Library

      1989
       
      The Tweed Journey, Canongate
      1987
      Leopardi: A Scottis Quair, Edinburgh University Press [translation]
       
      1984 Bed of Stone, Canongate, available from Scottish Poetry Library

      1977
       
      Each Bright Eye, Canongate, available from Scottish Poetry Library
      1975 
      Poetry Introduction 3, Faber
       
      1971 Trio, New Rivers Press, New York

       

       

      Contributions to Anthologies, selected

      2006 The New Minstrelsy of the Scottish Borders, Deerpark Press

      2005
       
       Tweed Rivers, Platform Press, Luath Press

      2002

       Scottish Literature in the Twentieth Century, Scottish Cultural Press

      2002

       The Faber Book of Twentieth Century Scottish Poetry, Faber

      2000

       Love for Love and Atoms of Delight, pocketbooks

      2000

       The Jewel Box CD, Scottish Poetry Library

      1998
       
       Homage to the Carmina Gadelica, Morning star
    • Poetry in Public Places

      Valerie Gillies has been inspired to create intensely collaborative works

      'Valerie Gillies has been inspired to create intensely collaborative works with contemporary sculptors. The poems from these public arts installations, though included in The Lightning Tree (2002), must be seen with their sculptures in order to be fully understood, since they transform the landscape through the ever-present perception of the viewer.
      In this way, Gillies finally creates an art form that lives up to the Scottish landscape's 'recreative' (rather than definitive) powers."

       

      Professor Laura Severin
      North Carolina State University

       

      Inscriptions

      Poetry by Valerie Gillies for site-specific installations.
       

      2007 Inscription for the opening of the new Edinburgh City Council headquarters at Waverley Court

       

      2005 A Place Apart, text handwritten by Valerie Gillies and screenprinted by Evelyn Pottie for The Quiet Room, Marie Curie Hospice, Edinburgh

       

      2002 Below the Surface, text set in Albertus and screenprinted by Brian McBeath for The Trimontium Trust Museum, Melrose

       

      2001 Ballad of Leaderfoot, text on stone seats, with sculptor and letter-carver Gary Fay, Leaderfoot near Melrose

       

      2001 The Glide, text in bronze, with sculptor Denys Mitchell, at Coldstream

       

      2001 Quick Water, text in bronze, with sculptor Jake Harvey, at Kirroughtree, Galloway Forest Park

       

      1998 Tweed's Well, panel text in stone, with sculptor Fly Freeman, at the source of the River Tweed

      Exhibitions Cross media work with visual artists

      2008 Dewpoint with Carol Dunbar and Rebecca Marr, travelled to Stuttgart

      2007
       
       Close, Closer, Closest with fibre artist Anna S. King.

      2001
       
       Galloway Forest Park, text in bronze, with sculptor Jake Harvey

      2001
       
      Coldstream, text on bronze handrail, with sculptor Denys Mitchell

      2001

       Ballad of Leaderfoot, text on stone seats, letter-carver Gary Fay

      2000

       Men and Beasts, exhibition with Rebecca Marr, art.tm gallery, Inverness & on tour

      1999

       Scotland to the World to Scotland, National Museums of Scotland

      1998

       Pax Romana, City Art Centre, Edinburgh Festival Exhibitions

      1998

       Tweed's Well, panel text on site, with sculptor Fly Freeman, Scottish Borders

      1998 
       

      Poems by Prescription, Artlink Hospital Galleries, Edinburgh and Lothians

      1996 
      A Night of Islands, with Will Maclean, Contemporary British Art in Print, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, and Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

      1994

       River Spirits, touring Dundee, Inverness, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh

      1990

       Tweed Journey, with Shelley Klein and Savourna Stevenson, Scottish Borders

      Public readings and events (selected)

      2020 Online readings for Maggie's Centres

       

      Workshops (selected)

      Current work

      Maggie's Centre - Developing and delivering Journalling, Creative Writing and Writers' Café courses

      Lapidus - Valerie delivers training for trainers on the Lapidus programme

       

       

       

    • Springteller

      "The Spring Teller has become a project on a grand scale. I continue to travel to the springs and wells,

      learning the lore surrounding them and the cures sought at them."

      The Spring Teller Project

      Valerie Gillies received a Creative Scotland Award in 2005 to write The Spring Teller, a book of landmark poems inspired by Scotland’s wells and springs. She completed this after travelling to many locations in Scotland and Ireland. The collection was published by Luath in 2008.

       

       

      Find out about The Sping Teller

       

      Read a selection of poetry from The Spring Teller...

      The Balm Well

      Frog Spring

      Mermaid Pool

      At Brandy Well

       

      Note: Writing the Balm Well and Monk's Well (St Andrews) has changed the environment of these wells. Performing the poems in public has encouraged local residents to look after their own wells in a more fitting manner. The power of poetry!

      Read about the future of The Spring Teller Buy the book "The Spring Teller"

    • Edinburgh Makar

      A spatchcock town, the ribcage split open
      like a skellie, a kipper, a guttit haddie.

      Valerie Gillies was the Edinburgh Makar, poet laureate to the city, in 2005. Her 'official' poems include The Balm Well in 2005, A Place Apart in 2006 and To Edinburgh, a poem composed for the opening by HRH Princess Anne of the new Edinburgh District Council building, Waverley Court, in 2007.

       

      Poet Valerie Gillies and photographer Rebecca Marr read their book Men and Beasts with Scottish deerhound friends in Makars' Court, the writers' museum, Edinburgh- Royal Mile.

       

      Read the poem "To Edinburgh" here.

       

    © 2019

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